Ruth Wandhofer

Powerlist Category: Senior Leaders

In 2024 Ruth chaired the Bank of England’s Privacy Working Group on Central Bank Digital Currencies, an incredibly important topic for how innovative technologies can support both citizens and the economy when it comes to new forms of money. Over the last year she also advised the ECB and industry associations on their CBDC and Digital Asset projects. Producing unique insights into the rapidly evolving digital economy, Ruth has continued to share her views in keynotes as well as in her most recent book on ‘Redecentralisation’.

Ruth actively supported technology innovations across different firms where she holds independent non-executive director positions as well as in her role as VC Partner at Gauss Ventures.

She has specifically taken an in-depth interest in cybersecurity technology solutions, working with a cyber start-up to build out their global offering in support of financial services providers but also regulators, critical infrastructures and key government services.

Ruth is the leading voice in the market on the evolving digital financial ecosystem. Her personal contribution and impact to the financial ecosystem is to raise awareness and educate on complex issues in a way that is easily accessible. She regularly speaks or chairs high profile conferences globally and there are multiple publicly available interviews and articles about her FinTech work. She is so passionate about her work across Fintech that she published three books and became a Visiting Professor at Cass Business School (now Bayes), teaching Fintech in Banking and Finance and Digital Money. Ruth is very focused on the impact of more digitisation and technology on our day to day lives, including how we use our personal agency.
She is also in the process of writing a novel on Quantum AI, which leverages her industry experiences and provides a futuristic outlook onto the challenges of AI for humanity.